The Land of No Name

The Land of No Name


“We must go very quietly,” exclaimed Marisol. “Make sure no one hears you.”
The three girls tiptoed along the dark corridor, adjoining the borders accommodation and the main school. Passing the classrooms, heading towards the sports annex they crept. Near the entrance, where the new and old buildings were joined by a small reception area, Marisol showed them a wooden door hidden in the corner. The girls stared in amazement. They had never noticed it before. Not surprising as it was so well disguised, blending into the natural wooden décor of the old building.

“I saw the caretaker go in one day,” whispered Marisol, “so I followed him.”
“You did what?” exclaimed Belinda.
“What if he had seen you? You’ve got some nerve,” added Sasha.
“Well he didn’t, now shush you two or someone will hear us. Anyway, I was curious and I wanted to see where he had gone.”
“What did you find?” asked Belinda.
“Yeah, what’s in there?” questioned Sasha, thrusting her head and shoulders forward expectantly, waiting for an explanation.
“Not telling you,” laughed Marisol. “I’m going to show you,” she said excitedly beckoning the two girls to follow her.

Glancing around all was quiet. Only the shadows of the trees blowing in the gentle breeze behind the large stained glass window could be seen. The night lights which glowed a mixture of lemon and orange created an ambience of peace and tranquility. The girls watched with bated breath as Marisol reached for a large rusty key hanging on a nail, hidden in a tiny dark crevice above the door. She took the key and turned it carefully in the lock, then slowly opened the door to minimize the creaking which she had noticed the first time she had entered. Ushering her companions into the tiny landing at the top of the staircase, she closed the door behind them, locking it securely.

“It’s dark,” moaned Sasha, “really dark! I don’t like it.”
“Shush,” whispered Marisol digging her in the ribs and flicking the switch on a small torch which she produced from a hidden pocket.
“Hey they’re cool pjs. How come they have pockets?” giggled Belinda.
“I don’t know,” whispered Marisol, “for snotty tissues I suppose and they are not pyjamas as you call them. It’s a sleep snug.”
“Ooo posh. A sleep snug,” she mimicked.
“And for torches that she’s nicked from the office,” laughed Sasha. “She’s gonna be in big trouble.”
“Shut up you two,” snapped Marisol. She was about to take her friends on an amazing adventure and they were more interested in what she slept in and a pink torch! Ergh! “Go slowly and quietly,” she said shining the light beneath them. “And take those stupid slippers off Sash; they are an accident waiting to happen.”
Sasha kicked aside two hedgehog shaped brown and cream fluffy slippers, complaining that now her feet would be cold. The other girls, grateful that they had on their orange and green striped warm slipper socks, ignored her constant complaining, as they descended the stairs – thirteen in all. Sasha counted every one of them.

Shining the torch around it looked like a very typical cellar, harboring a fusty smell and plenty of critters, who soon scurried away, startled by the light. Sasha screamed, as a large cobweb caught her face, she moved quickly and bumped her big toe on a stone slab.
“Shush!” said the other girls simultaneously.
“Why? S-o-o-o what?” whimpered Sasha. “There’s nothing down here,” she wined looking around. “My feet are cold. Really cold. It’s horrible and I don’t like it.” She looked as though she was going to cry, but by now Marisol was pre-occupied and taking no notice of either her or Belinda.
“Shut up,” snapped Belinda as she watched Marisol, who was cautiously moving towards the darkest corner of the cellar. Shining her torch, an old stone archway came into view and another smaller room beyond.
“Look!” exclaimed Marisol. “This must have been used for storage years ago. Do you know the school is over two hundred years old? The boarding house mistress told me.”
Sasha hobbled on one foot, her toe hurting desperately. She wondered if it was broken, but clung on to Belinda, who followed Marisol into the other room.

“Wow! These must be all the old school books,” said Sasha sarcastically. “How interesting! Drrr…. Let’s get out of here, its creepy!”
“Shut up! Stop moaning,” growled Marisol as she picked up a large, burgundy leather bound book, blowing off a layer of dust.
“So what’s so interesting about a pile of old school books?” asked Sasha, tears pricking her face. Now she was sure her toe was broken!
“Sasha, we will go soon, I just want to show you what I found last time. This is it. The book I wanted you to see. I tried to open it and I couldn’t. Then I heard a noise like someone was coming and I panicked and ran, but I knew I had to come back. There’s something very weird about this book, I feel it!”
“Are you crazy? It’s a book, a dirty old book. And what do you mean you couldn’t open it? Are the pages stuck together or something? Let me see,” said Belinda as she prized the book from Marisol’s grasp and cleaned its cover thoroughly with the sleeve of her pajamas.
“Look,” she said reading the gold lettering embossed on the front cover.
“El Libro de Vida, it’s some foreign language. I wonder what it means?”
“The book of life, it’s Spanish,” said Marisol.
“How do you know?” Asked Sasha.
“Cos I’m Mexican you fool. Spanish is my first language. Sash you are dumb sometimes.”
“Don’t be so mean,” she replied looking hurt, wishing she had stayed behind in her warm cosy bed.
“Well, open it then,” urged Marisol to Belinda, who was holding onto the book firmly.
“Maybe it’s stuck because it’s not a book. It just looks like a book,” said Sasha.
“What are you talking about Sash?”
“Well maybe it’s a secret box, or something disguised as a book.”
“If it’s a secret box it still has to open somewhere,” said Marisol as she went to re-claim it from Belinda and prize it open herself.

It was heavy and the book fell crashing to the floor just missing Sasha’s toes. “Oh brill, you make me go barefoot. I nearly break a toe, then feel I have frost bite, and not satisfied with that, just snap them off why don’t you?”
Marisol rolled her eyes, “Oh Sash, you are s-o-o dramatic. No wonder they chose you for the leading role in the next school production.”.
“I’m going, I hate you. You are horrible Marisol,” she whined as she turned to leave the cellar hobbling towards the rickety wooden steps.
“Shut up you two,” snapped Belinda, suddenly aware that the floor beneath her had begun to tremor. First it was a little, and then a little more, until the whole of the cellar felt as though it was shaking vigorously. The three girls soon forgot their differences, flung their arms around each other, and huddled tightly together.

“Wow, that was scary,” shivered Sasha when the tremor stopped. “What do you think it was? Maybe it was an earthquake.”
“Don’t be stupid Sash, it wasn’t an earthquake,” snapped Marisol.
“Ok smart“#@&!” What was it then? And stop calling me stupid, and stop calling me Sash. I’ll never know how we ever became friends ‘cos you are always horrible Marisol.”
“Soz,” said Marisol realizing that she really was quite mean to Sasha and didn’t intend to be. She had liked her since the first day she met her at the boarding school, when she discovered they had so much in common. Well, a bad mother at least, Marisol’s mother being a workaholic, Sasha’s mother an alcoholic. Either way both girls seemed to be victims of bad mother syndrome. Belinda’s was not much better. Her mother was a shopaholic with one hundred pairs of shoes. Belinda once counted them! Not to mention the bulging wardrobes, full of stuff most of which had not even been worn. She had never wanted children; she just wanted to be a socialite like her two best friends.

So the girls had all bonded and formed a close relationship, which had now taken them into their third term at boarding school. They bunked down together. Sasha was known to be somewhat of a moaner and an attention seeker, consequently Marisol did get rather irritable with her, though Marisol could be quite selfish and moody herself if she didn’t get her own way. She always liked to be in control. As for Belinda she was easy going and quite chilled out most of the time and had come to the conclusion that she was going to be the peacemaker between the other two, seeing she had to share a room with them.

The girls were just beginning to calm down and think again about the mysterious book when a soft breeze began to blow. It gathered pace, as a cloud formed above their heads swirling slowly around the room. Sasha’s long blond hair was tied firmly in a ponytail but Belinda and Marisol looked as though they had both had a fight with a prickly bush, every hair on their head blown out of place. The wind or breeze, whatever it was felt warm, like something you would expect blowing across the Mediterranean beach on the hottest of days. Then, that too, like the tremor suddenly stopped.

“I’m out of here!” squealed Sasha.
“Me too,” agreed Belinda, thinking she didn’t want to stay in the eerie cellar another second. They both turned to head towards the steps.
“No wait,” shouted Marisol. “It’s nothing to be afraid of. This happened last time I was here.”
“But you didn’t say that, you just said you heard a noise and then scarpered. Why didn’t you tell us about this weird stuff?” screamed Belinda.
“Because you probably wouldn’t have stayed,” quipped Marisol.
“Right about that one,” snapped Sasha. “Too right, it’s scary!” she said shivering again.
“So what happened after the wind and the earthquake?” asked Belinda trembling.
“The earthquake and the wind,” corrected Marisol.
“O.K Chilanga, the earthquake and the wind,” tutted Sasha.
Marisol was furious at being called a chilanga, but now wasn’t the time to bother.
“I don’t know, I scarpered! But I know one thing, someone has been here since then because the book has moved. I remember, it was over there,” and she pointed to a stack of books on a table at the far side of the cellar. “And when we came in it was there,” she said showing them another heap on a different table.

Suddenly there was a deathly silence. There it was, the large, leather bound, burgundy book with the gold embossed lettering sitting proudly in front of all the other books.
“But it was on the floor, we dropped it,” whispered Marisol breaking the silence.
Three pairs of wide eyes looked at the floor where the book had laid. “It just missed Sasha’s toes, remember?”
The book was not on the floor. The book was three foot above floor level on the table.
“I’m going to faint,” gasped Sasha. Her ponytail suddenly feeling it was going to spin around furiously.

All was quiet. You could hear a pin drop, but no one had a pin. Jaws open in amazement, the girls senses told them something else was happening. This time it wasn’t scary. A strange peace filled the room, as did the light. It began as a tiny speckle hovering above the book. The sort of light you get when a doctor shines his small torch into your mouth to investigate. You know, when you complain of a sore throat and all that stuff. The light started to get larger and increase in intensity, almost blinding, and building up to a crescendo until the room was filled by its brilliance. The girls all shielded their eyes until it seemed to calm a little, and they were able to look directly into its form. They saw a shape, an incredible shape, angelic, human, they couldn’t ascertain, but the still small voice which spoke to them was very clear. As if in a trance, the girls were all transfixed to the spot, they could have each been standing in a pot of glue. Sticky, gooey, they couldn’t move! They weren’t going anywhere and they didn’t try. Three twelve year old girls with a common thread, a *****aholic mother. That would be the glue that would bind them together. Marisol from Mexico City: a true Chilanga. Belinda from the United States – LA to be precise – Sasha from the UK, a Yorkshire lass. Little did they know, but they had all been brought together for such a time as this.

The form spoke to them.

“It is no mistake. No accident or fluke that you are all here tonight. This is your destiny. Time will stand still. Though time waits for no man, it waits for me. There are things I will show you. Secrets that I will reveal to you. And a vision which I shall impart into each of your hearts. For I will tell you this. Without vision my people will perish. And the vision you will carry until the appointed time. When you leave this place you will forget that which I have shown you. There will come a day however when you look back on your lives and wonder. How did I get here? You will be reunited with each other, having led separate and very different lives. There will come a day when you will look back and remember that which I have shown you.”

The girls not moving a muscle, hardly daring to breath, watched whilst the pages of the book turned over and rested.

Marisol began to read.

“There is a land beyond your wildest dreams. A land where what appears real is unreal and what seems unreal is real, a land that only knows truth, which if you visit you will never want to leave. It has no name. It is indeed the land of no name, because it is the place of many things. It is the place where dreams are made, a land of all things to all people, a land of pink candy floss, milk and honey. This is where my story begins and will not end, for there are no endings in the land of no name. It never rains, for there is no need of rain, yet the land is full of lush, green vegetation. Fed and enriched by the morning dew, there are flowers and plants you will never see beyond this land. It is here, that you will meet animals that fascinate and endear you – beguiling to the eye. Where the lion lies down with the lamb, the guinealoon, the hypotonotaurus, the bearsheeba and the sticklefox. A land where only those who enter as children may go.”

They held hands and stepped forward, as if being prompted by an unknown force. And without a word, a glance or a nodding of the head, they knew they were stepping forward into the pages of the book. A story and a vision waiting to be told, they were entering another dimension, and although they didn’t know it yet, they were entering the land of No Name.

Seven in the morning and Marisol’s pink disco ball alarm clock sprang into action with its flashing lights and music, startling everyone, just as the boarding house mistress nosily clumped along the corridor, determined to make sure everyone heard her morning call.
“Morning girls, breakfast in 30 minutes. Awake and spritely please.”
The three room-mates stirred, Belinda and Marisol the first to tumble out of bed, looking at each other puzzled. Had they been dreaming? Then Sasha clambered out of the top bunk. “Ouch!” she whimpered. “Look at my toe. It’s black and swollen and it hurts so. How did that happen?” she muttered looking bemused.
The two girls stared, as the door opened and the boarding house mistress entered the room.
“Girls, get a move on, look lively. Twenty minutes to breakfast. What are you staring at Sasha?” she asked.
“It’s my foot ma’am, it hurts.”
“Then you must get matron to look at it. I hope this isn’t an excuse to get out of your studies today Sasha. I don’t know what you girls will think of next!”
“Huh, she never even checked it out,” exclaimed Sasha as the house mistress turned and left the room.
“Well you better do what she says,” bellowed Marisol. “Come on, be quick, I’m starving.”
Turn that stupid clock off,” snapped Sasha.
“Ja! Ja! Another day,” laughed Marisol. “Race you to the dining room.